


five minutes of reflection on a bumpy troika ride

by onetrueobligation



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:08:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14097921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetrueobligation/pseuds/onetrueobligation
Summary: Dolokhov knows it’s the calm before the storm, that everything could go to hell at any moment, that Anatole is going to be in more trouble than he knows how to cope with.But at least for now, they can forget their anxieties for the troika ride home.





	five minutes of reflection on a bumpy troika ride

**Author's Note:**

> this ficlet was written as a request from a friend! the relationship here is sort of ambiguous — you can basically read them as either friends or lovers. i hope you enjoy, and i’m working on shaking off my writer’s block and writing something with a little more substance (also — a collab could possibly be on the way 0.0)

Wrestling with the porter by the gate was certainly less than ideal, and Dolokhov was blindingly aware now of how stupid it was to ever think this plan would work. Why on Earth had he ever agreed to this ridiculous plan? It had all seemed like a joke, back when Anatole had first suggested it, and yet here he was, once again saving his friend’s neck. Goddammit.

‘Anatole, come back!’ he shouted. Anatole, from the looks of things, was way ahead of him. A blur of green was momentarily all Fedya could see as Anatole sprinted away from Marya Dmitrievna’s grand house. However, before he could leave the grounds, the porter blocked him, still struggling with Fedya in an attempt to lock the gate. Fedya, upon seeing Anatole’s fear-stricken expression, made a little growl of anger and shoved the porter aside, wrapping an arm around Anatole and guiding him over to the troika, crying ‘ _Go!_ ’ at the chuckling driver, who seemed nothing short of amused by the whole ordeal.

Once they were seated in the troika and well on their way, Fedya turned to get a good look at his friend. Anatole seemed to be in shock. His lips were slightly parted, and his unblinking eyes were fixed straight ahead, as though still seeing the figure of a slim young woman before him. Fedya had to fight down the urge to raise his eyes to heaven. He’d warned against this, and Anatole had chosen not to listen.

‘I told you this would happen,’ he said flatly.

Anatole turned to look at him, and his eyes flashed with anger for just a moment before his hopeless expression returned. ‘You helped me,’ he pointed out with a miserable grimace, turning his eyes away again.

‘Hey. Look at me. I know I helped you, but I never said it was a good idea.’ He reached out to gently tilt Anatole’s face toward his own. ‘There’s plenty of other girls out there, you know.’

‘I know. But none of them are Natalie.’

Fedya huffed. Anatole was being rather ridiculous about this. ‘Listen to me. It would never have worked. What if she found out about the Polish girl, hm? What would happen when the money ran out? Would you end up crawling back to your sister — to me?’

Anatole pursed his lips.

‘Christ, Anatole, what about everything you have here?’ he pressed, not nearly finished. ‘Helene, for one thing. You have money, you have women, you have everything you could possibly want. And yet you’d throw all that away for a girl you don’t even know?’

‘Shut up,’ Anatole snapped.

‘Oh, no, Anatole, I think I’ve earned my right to speak. Who was it who helped you pay for all this? Who wrote your letters for you, arranged for a priest, called the witnesses—?’

‘Shut _up_.’

Fedya folded his arms across his chest with a _hmph_. ‘What do you think they’re going to do now? You think they’ll simply let it be? You think that oaf Bezukhov is going to forget it all when he hears of it?’

That seemed to hit a nerve with Anatole, for next thing Fedya knew, he was sobbing into his hands like an infant.

Fedya closed his eyes and counted to ten, letting out a hiss of air as he did so. Then, gingerly, he put an arm around Anatole, pulling him closer to his chest. ‘Hush, now, there’s no need to be so upset. There’s nothing we can do about it now.’

‘I’m never going to see her again,’ Anatole cried, voice muffled. Out of his sight, Fedya rolled his eyes.

‘Tolya, for Christ’s sake. You’re making a scene.’

Anatole only sobbed harder.

‘You’re going to ruin your coat if you keep that up,’ Fedya said after a pause, only smirking in the slightest.

The sobs subsided rather abruptly and Fedya had to bite his lip to stop himself laughing.

‘What am I going to do?’ Anatole whimpered, grabbing Fedya’s sleeve and wiping his eyes on the back of it.

‘Go back to your father?’ Fedya suggested, yanking his arm out of Anatole’s grip.

Anatole looked at him sceptically. ‘And what do you think he has to say to me? Am I to tell him about my wife? Explain why I can’t marry any of his wealthy heiresses?’

‘Go to war?’

‘And get myself killed?’ He sniffed. ‘That lifestyle might suit brutes like you, but some of us have a desire to remain alive rather than die covered in filth on some battlefield.’

Dolokhov chuckled quietly. Anatole was squabbling with him. That was a good sign. If he was squabbling, he was recovering. Forgetting.

‘Well, I suppose you can wait here in Moscow until Bolkonsky challenges you to a duel.’

Anatole’s eyes widened and he went quiet. ‘…Do you think he’d really do that?’ he asked, and Fedya could sense genuine fear behind his words.

‘He might,’ Fedya answered with a shrug. No point in lying to him. ‘I know Bolkonsky. He has an obsession with honour and all that. Word getting out that his fiancée refused him for a Petersburg scoundrel would certainly be a blow to him.’

A smirk played on Anatole’s lips. Whether it was from the thought of Andrey falling from society’s approval or from being called a scoundrel, Fedya couldn’t tell.

‘Would you be my second if he did challenge me?’ he asked, nestling a little closer to Fedya and closing his eyes.

Fedya looked at him for a moment. This wasn’t what he did. He was Dolokhov the fierce, Dolokhov the assassin, cold and heartless and ruthless. And yet time and time again, Anatole would always manage to be his weakness. No matter how many times Fedya thought he’d won, thought he’d found a way to keep him out, Anatole would find a way to get what he wanted. It was infuriating.

‘Yes,’ Fedya said with a heavy sigh, pulling him closer in an attempt to get some warmth into him. ‘Of course I would.’

 


End file.
